Video of the incident, which involved three aviation security officers dragging the 69-year-old Dr. David Dao off the plane, stirred outrage online and in the media. Dao refused to step off the flight to make room for a United employee. He had to be hospitalized for a concussion and other injuries sustained in the melee.

Throughout the controversy, however, Munoz refused to place blame on his employees, even emphasising that he stood behind them and commending them for going “above and beyond.”

At Glassdoor’s Recruit Event, the CEO discussed the airline’s internal response to the controversy. He said that his No. one objective was his employees — not the airline’s passengers:

“It was about supporting our employees because for me, the objective is I cannot lose these folks. As much as people wanted me to potentially blame other people, I couldn’t do it because once they see someone who they think highly of — in this case, me — if they see them in a tough moment giving up on their principles and starting to blame somebody else, I think you start getting at the root and the heart of someone’s true principles, and I could not let that happen.”

“I had to support our employees despite the intense, massive, ugly scrutiny that we got because of that,” Munoz told the audience at the Glassdoor event. “It wasn’t them — it was policies and principles that got in the way…”